Florida's best

(Credit: FPG)

The 58th annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition will run through Aug. 30 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. The exhibit consists of 60 artworks in various media, whittled down by judge Roy Slade from some 1,260 submissions. We decided to spotlight a few of the works and the artistic personalities behind them.

JAMI NIX RAHN

City: Weston

Work on display: "Geneva Market," painting

Rahn's paintings have the striking verisimilitude of photorealism, creating deception through representation.

In its most basic function, photography is a device to record reality. Do you look at painting the same way? Does your artist's hand interfere at all with the reality in front of you?
The artist's hand is in play from the beginning. I work from my own self-generated photos. As to recording reality, both photography and painting are capable of recording reality. It is our perception of reality that comes into question when confronted with the choice of believing a photo or a painting.

What's your favorite thing about living and working in Florida?
Not having to wear mittens to paint.

Who inspired you most to create art?
My parents. My father was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. After long tours of duty aboard aircraft carriers, he would come home and continue work on a clay bust of mother.

Describe your art in one word.
Perception.

MICHELLE BRUZZESE

City: Delray Beach

Work on display: "Supplies," photography

"Supplies" is part of Bruzzese's Slaughterhouse series, shot from inside the bowels of a Mexican slaughterhouse.

Some of the pieces in your Slaughterhouse series show animals, both before and after. Is the piece selected for All Florida somehow more horrifying because it doesn't show much, leaving the story to our imagination?
When I was there, I found that some of the rooms I walked through that were void of the animals, and their remains were more mysterious. It was the details (equipment, texture, wall color) in these open rooms that certainly left more to my imagination about what had happened in them and what was happening around the corner. I would imagine the more-abstract photographs capturing this would feel the same to others. There's an inevitable outcome to what happens at a slaughterhouse. Some may classify this as horrific. It is not my intention to expose this slaughterhouse as such. This series, including the piece selected for the All Florida, is my vision of what was there.

Did any of your preconceived notions about slaughterhouses change during or after your visit?
I didn't have a preconceived notion. My curiosity alongside the photographic process to document it was my main inspiration in producing work here. As someone who enjoys eating meat, I believe I have a moral responsibility to fully understand the process of how meat ends up on my plate. It turned out to not be a traumatic experience for me. I came out of it being the same person, with an even greater appreciation of animals and of the labor put forth by workers of this trade.

Describe your art in one word.
Honest.

GEORGE PAXTON

City: Vero Beach

Work on display: "Too Much Dancing," sculpture

Paxton's classically derived sculptures are exquisite in their detail. His contribution to All Florida owes a debt to Degas' bronzes.

Your sculpture is one of the more classically styled pieces in a show dominated by modern art. How do you feel about that?
I wish more representational art had been chosen for the show, and I was surprised by the amount of digital photography that was displayed. It occurs to me that art is sometimes considered to be what is on "the cutting edge." If it has not been done before, it can be judged positively regardless of its technical merit. Of course, there are extreme examples that could be mentioned here like the "blank" off-white canvas hanging in the Guggenheim. By now, I'm sure you know, I have my reservations about nonrepresentational art.

What's your favorite thing about living and working in Florida?
The climate, the sunshine, the friendliness of the people.

What's your least favorite thing about living in Florida?
It's not New York.

Describe your art in one word.
Sensuous.

JEAN CAPPADONNA-NICHOLS

City: Fort Myers

Work on display: "Day Dreamer With Botticelli Barbie," sculpture

Cappadonna-Nichols' pop art sculptures comment on the practice of tattoos or body art, her sculpted canvases cluttered with interconnected iconography.

Do you proscribe particular meaning to your work? Should we find connections, for instance, between the fruits, animals and various cultural images that adorn "Day Dreamer?"
Yes, all the imagery in my work is chosen for a reason. They all carry baggage, do represent my thoughts and are visual substitutes for the spoken language. They connect in a roundabout way. For instance, my imagery evolves through a stream-of-consciousness kind of thought … one idea spawns another and so on.

Do you have any tattoos or body art yourself?
No! I'm not into pain. In 1988, I saw a book called The Art of the Classical Japanese Tattoo. I fell in love with the imagery, but more importantly was captivated with the ways and means that the artists used to circuitously traverse the bodily form.

Describe your art in one word.
Horror-vacui.

RUSSELL RAND

City: Fort Lauderdale

Work on display: "Panic Attack," mixed media

Rand's mélange consists of pen, pencil and photography, an anarchic blitzkreig of information commenting, partly, on the Wall Street collapse and the swine flu pandemic.

Do you see your work, and this piece in particular, as a way to deal with the country's problems?
Artists don't actually solve problems; we just express the collective feelings of the social, economic and political issues of the times. We are barometers of the collective consciousness. This piece, which combines a digital image shot in Vienna with an image of a carousel in Hartford, shouts out the pain and pangs of fear that pervade our crisis-driven news media assault—fearmongering at its best.

What's your favorite part about working and living in Florida?
The excitement of this melting pot of diverse cultures jammed into the remnants of a tropical paradise.

What's your least favorite part about working and living in Florida?
The politics of hypocrisy, or the hypocrisy of politics.

Describe your art in one word.
Colorful.

BETSY ORBE LESTER

City: Treasure Island

Work on display: "Immaculate Sigh," mixed media/ready-made art

Lester's All Florida contribution is couture at its most crudely primitive: a women's heeled shoe made of wood, dried leaves and twigs.

Should we look at your piece as a critique of high fashion?
I work the theme of carnival—idiosyncratic, surreal, transformative—complete here with matching metaphor: fashion. For isn't fashion the ultimate disguise, and its accouterments masks celebrating toil and play?

Creating in a series format, as I do here, enables me to explore mutually exclusive ideas of femininity and feminism together in the work. The process becomes inquiry. So frequent images of frivolity in my work—shoes, dresses and hats—question whether women are liberated by their power to seduce or enslaved by it.

What's your least favorite thing about working and living in Florida?
I would sod in the macadam. Strip malls do not intrigue.

Who inspired you most to create art?
My husband of 32 years, who died several years ago. Ken challenged my thinking and my doing. He gave me wonderment.

Describe your art in one word.
Don't ask.

The All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition is on display at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Mizner Park. Call 561-392-2500 or visit Bocamuseum.org.

Contact John Thomason at jpthomason@citylinkmagazine.com.